All For One was killed at the final war. He disintegrated into nothingness as his will to conquer faded to a scream.
The battlefield lay in ruins as a scorched valley stretched beneath a bleeding sky. Silence pressed down, broken only by the crackle of dying embers and the slow, uneven breathing of the last ones still standing.
Izuku Midoriya fell to one knee, blood dripping from his fingers, eyes locked on the spot where his enemy once stood. There was no body. No grave. Just dust... and a whisper that still rang in his ears:
"Power... is eternal."
He collapsed in victory, exhausted, as the weight of it all came crashing down all at once. The final war was over. But in the silence of this triumph, something stood and lingered—something unseen stirred.
—
All For One lay adrift in the abyss, the void stretching endlessly in every direction—cold, silent, and suffocating. Shadows pressed against him, not with weight, but with broken memory: echoes of screams, shattered dreams, and the countless lives twisted by his ambition.
The darkness did not embrace him. It consumed him, judging without words, without mercy. He reached out, clawing for something—anything—that might tether him to what once was.
But there was nothing. No followers. No fear. No future. Only silence, and the fading echo of a world that no longer belonged to him.
—
Suddenly, he gasped.
Air tore through his lungs. His body convulsed against cold metal. A ceiling light flickered above him—sterile, mechanical, unfamiliar.
He was lying on a table in the center of a ruined laboratory. Wires snaked from his chest, arms, and neck. His body ached—not from the battle, but from alterations. His skin felt tight. Wrong. Changed.
He sat up slowly, eyes scanning the room. Surgical tools lay strewn across dented trays—scalpels dulled with dried blood, shattered syringes on the floor.
The walls were lined with broken pods, some leaking thick fluid. Others still held bodies—pale, mutated, silent. Their eyes were open. Watching. Dead.
Above the heavy steel door, a rusted sign hung crooked:
Bolvar Industries.
He stared at the name, frowning.
It meant nothing.
Not a nation. Not a corporation. Not a faction.
Not anything from his world.
"Where... am I?" he muttered. His voice was hoarse, like broken glass scraping against itself.
He slid off the table, legs unsteady beneath him. Every step echoed in the silence, bouncing off empty halls filled with failure and forgotten experiments. A cold realization crept in.
This wasn't Hell.
This wasn't salvation.
This was somewhere else.
Another world? Another time?
He glanced down at his hands—scarred, sutured, unfamiliar—and clenched them into fists.
Then he saw them.
Small holes.
Clean, circular, that bore through the centers of his palms. Remnants of the past, a design he knew too well. A reminder of the power he once wielded. A mark of the monster he had been.
His breath hitched. These were not the hands of a new vessel.
They were the fragments of his original self, stitched back together, repurposed, reawakened.
"Impossible," he whispered.
Somehow, pieces of him had survived the end. Or worse—someone had collected them.
Whoever brought him here… had dug into the ashes of oblivion to rebuild him.
And they would regret it.
—
All For One tore the wires from his body, one by one. Sparks danced from the ends, but he barely flinched. The pain grounded him—reminded him he was real again.
He stepped carefully across the room, each motion controlled, methodical. His eyes scanned the corpses that surrounded him, mutants by their features and disfigured powers.
But something else lingered.
Power.
It hung in the air like smoke after a fire—faint but tangible. The residual essence of abilities, even in death.
He inhaled slowly.
He could feel them.
These were not just bodies. They were echoes of potential.
He approached the nearest corpse—a young mutant, gaunt and pale, mouth frozen mid-scream, eyes locked in an eternal stare. Wires were still threaded through his skull and chest. Dried blood formed a halo beneath him.
A familiar hunger crept into All For One's mind. Not one of food or thirst—but of need.
To take.
To absorb.
To reclaim.
His hand hovered above the chest of the dead mutant, the old instinct already pulsing through his veins. It was faint, but it was there. Something inside him—broken, unfinished—still remembered how to pull.
He still remembered how to take.
He hesitated for only a moment.
And then—
His hand dropped, fingers pressing against the cold flesh of the mutant's chest.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then he felt it.
A flicker.
A pulse.
Like a dying ember catching wind.
From somewhere that's deep inside the corpse, a lingering trace of power stirred — weak, fragmented, but real. His palm tingled greedily as the hole at its center began to glow faintly, an old mechanism groaning back to life like a rusted engine being forced awake.
All For One closed his eyes. He reached not with his hand, but with the core of what he was. The will that had once enslaved generations. The hunger that knew no bounds. The curse that made him a god amongst men.
The air grew cold. The lights above dimmed. Thin strands of energy — not seen, but he felt it, it began to coil around his fingers, drawn out from the body like smoke pulled from burning coal.
The corpse twitched.
Its mouth opened, not in a scream, but in a final, breathless gasp. Eyes rolled back. Chest collapsed inward.
The essence tore free.
It hit him like ice and lightning, crashing through his arm and into his chest, sending a jolt through every nerve in his body. He staggered, clutching his side, his breath catching in his throat. His knees hit the floor.
For a moment, it felt like too much — like his body couldn't contain it.
But then...
It settled.
The pain faded.
His breath returned.
He rose.
Not taller. Not stronger. But… alive in a way he hadn't been seconds ago. A low hum buzzed beneath his skin — the power of some long-forgotten mutant, now his.
He flexed his fingers. The room around him seemed sharper, more vibrant. Some primal sense, some minor ability, had joined with what remained of his broken form.
It was only a spark — but sparks could start fires.
He looked down at the withered husk at his feet, now drained, sunken, lifeless in a way that went beyond death.
His expression remained cold.
"There's still something left in me after all," he muttered.
And if one corpse held this much…
His eyes turned to the others.
Dozens of them.
Maybe more.
He began to walk to the rest of the corpses.